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LA outperforms most other cities for home price gains in January

Matthew DeBord

A for sale sign is seen in front of a home in Los Angeles. The Case-Shiller Home Price Index for January saw the city sustain it momentum, with another positive monthly gain and a big year-over-year increase. Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Winter is typically a slow period for the U.S. housing market outside the South and the Southwest U.S. so take L.A.'s January performance with a grain of salt. Prices increased by 0.9 percent from December, which was actually not as good as the November-December gain of 1.1 percent.

Compared with January of last year, however, prices in L.A. — one of the cities that appears in both the 10- and 20-city Case-Shiller composite indices — increased 12.1 percent. Los Angeles was one of eight cities that notched double-digit year-over-year gains, with Phoenix's red-hot market leading the entire Case-Shiller index, with a gain of 23.2 percent.

Case-Shiller lags the market by two months. The index represents a three-month moving average of prices. That's why we're just getting January numbers, even though it's almost April.

Elsewhere in California, San Francisco's December-January price gains were flat, while San Diego lost some ground, with a 0.6-percent decline. Year-over-year, both cities registered substantial gains, San Diego up 9.8 percent and San Francisco's 17.5-percent gain second only to Phoenix in the index.

Nationally, Case-Shiller continues to show that the U.S. housing market is in recovery mode.

"The two headline composites posted their highest year-over-year increases since summer 2006. This marks the highest increase since the housing bubble burst," said David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, in a statement.

Home prices in the U.S. have now recovered to late 2003 level, according the index. But they're still well off peaks hit in 2006-07.

Previously in The Breakdown

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